Chris Cole Walks Away With The Skate Park Dew Cup

By: Nick Lipton – It’s official, Chris Cole has taken the Dew Cup. Chris’ first place finish at the PlayStation Pro set the champ apart from last year’s winner Chaz Ortiz by 62 points in the overall Tour rankings. This win is as big for the Dew Tour as it is for Cole, and in Ryan Sheckler’s words, “I love this, it’s great for skating, it’s great that this crowd can come out and see a ‘core’ skater like Chris.” But, enough about Cole for now–I’m sure you want a recap.

This was the last Skate Park event of the 2009 Tour, and the desire to end on a strong note, and impress the fans pushed the level of skating up a few notches. In Heat One only one man would become a finalist, P-Rod. Paul’s a serious guy, he’s got diapers and baby food to buy after all, and when Jay-Z started blasting out of the speakers, P-Rod went to work with switch backlips, a huge nollie heel, and a back 180 nosegrind among other things. During the first round jam Paul even switch flipped down the stair set, and if you weren’t in the know, you would have thought it was regular.

Heat One might have been light on finalists, but it wasn’t on bangers. Austen Seaholm reminded everyone that he is one of the best tech riders in the world when he manualed for a solid 60 feet, crashed into a camera man, continued to manual, and reverted just before dropping back into the course. Jordan Hoffart blasted out of the gate like a pissed off bull and hammered out a 50-50 over the death gap and into the launch ramp. Chris Mendes landed a back 360 flip–try that one in your garage. Timmy Knuth, at 18 years-old, skated amazingly well. Timmy cut his hand open and bled all over while doing crail front blunts, flips into slides, a switch front board, and a 360 flip over the death gap and into the bank. Timmy was on fire, but Rodolfo Ramos wasn’t going to be out done. Rodolfo did what he’s been doing all summer, and that’s skate fast, land bolts, and do a whole lot of back 180 nosegrinds and bluntslides.

The final super-jam is made up of six riders, and five of them were from Heat Two. Danilo Do Rosario started this one off and continued to kickflip everything. Milton Martinez came out of left field to deliver a beating. Milton skates big: the kid is constantly hurling himself up and down the stair set, down the biggest rails, and over the biggest gaps. Milton can turn a kickflip into a hammer and a grab into the gnarliest thing you’ve ever seen. That’s the pay off of skating big. I’m not sure how this part happened, but Ryan Decenzo ended up the one guy from Heat Two not to qualify for the final jam. He had some bangers, but I guess these next three guys just brought too much heat.

Greg Lutzka, Chaz Ortiz, and Chris Cole capped off the pre-final jam skating. Greg skated better than he has in a while, and may have trademarked the 270 today. Greg was spinning on and off of everything, then moved onto kickflipping on and off everything, and finally moved on to flip tricks down the set and over the handrail. It was a good day for Greg. Chaz had his crowd pleasers too: Double flips to front boards, big flip tricks, and a bigflip frontboard had all the girls losing their voices while trying to get his attention.

Then this one guy took the course – some little kid’s dad who listens to death metal and wears a lot of black. Oh, his name just happens to be Chris Cole. Cole turned on the heat just long enough to make everyone else feel like going home. Some highlights: Frontside and Backside 270’s down the handrail, straight on ollies led to 50-50’s on everything, no matter the length, a Seaholm-like manual appeared, I saw a backside 180 nosegrind 180 out, a back 180 smith, and after all of that no one was convinced he had even tried his hardest–everyone was just excited to see what Chris would do next in the final super-jam.

When the final jam of the top six skaters began, the crowd energy was threw the roof. This was it, the final jam, the one that would end with a new Dew Cup champion–and all eyes were on Chris Cole. While it’s true today belonged to Cole each of the six rode exceptionally well. Coming in fifth today, and second overall in Dew Tour standings, Chaz Ortiz laid out some heavy double flip front boards. In fourth place, (tenth overall), Danilo Do Rosario had some good kickflip rail combos and a hard nollie shuv backboard. Lutzka kept his 270 streak alive, kickflipped into blunts, frontboards, and banks, and earned his third place finish, that put him in sixth overall. P-Rod finally got his groove back today, riding switch more often than regular, and being responsible for some of the Tour’s heaviest bangers. It was enough to earn second place today, which put him in third overall. When skating regular, Paul landed a lateflip, doubleflip front board, 360 flip down the set, and a bunch of other stuff bolts, and then he turned it around. While switch, Paul did most of those tricks and more: switch flip frontboard, switch frontblunt, switch 360 flip down the set, those are hammers, but none of that could touch Cole.

Cole destroyed the competition, the Dew Tour, and the minds of anyone watching. Tip-toeing across rails while finger-flipping into and out of them, 360’s up the death gap, down the set, back 270’s, front 270’s, flip tricks off and over this and that, it was ridiculous. When the contest ended people waited around to see Chris receive his crown. The media frenzy was ridiculous, the Commissioner of Orlando gave Cole a bunch of oranges, and a lot of people were screaming for his autograph. Chris’s family was hanging around, his wife was happy that he won, but happier that he was having a good time with his son, who she constantly had to chase down and stop from jumping off things (sounds like the son of a skater). But what about Chris? His answer to “How do you feel?” was a bit casual, “I’m alright, I feel happy.” A bit more emotion came through when asked how hard he tried, which Cole laughed off and smugly said, “Sure, yeah, just having fun.” But it was obvious where the new Dew Tour champ wanted to be, and that was with his family, at Disney World.